This week saw the arrival of Intel’s new breed of CPU, Haswell – and already the design has been dogged with controversy.

PC Pro has word from British PC manufacturers that the retail versions of the Haswell chips are unable to match the overclocked speeds shown by the pre-production units offered to manufacturers for testing.

Overclocking is the process of getting more performance from the CPU than the stock specifications. It’s quite common amongst the gaming PC community and perfectly safe if performed correctly.

One company claimed that while the pre-production Haswell chips could overclock to 4.7GHz or 4.8Ghz “with ease”, retail versions of the same chips can’t move beyond 4.2Ghz without running dangerously hot.

Speaking of which, the same companies have also voiced concerns about the running temperature of the new Haswell chips which not only run far warmer than Intel’s previous generation of CPUs but also about 15°C hotter than production samples.

Consumers who are familiar with overclocking will know that it’s not an exact science. No one chip is the same as another and results will vary every time. However, the fact that this drop in performance has been so consistent has certainly raised eyebrows.

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